She's actually a Millennial, but whatever.
I wanted to write about this sooner, but working Ainsley's job is one of the most draining experiences of my life; I've got nothing left by the time I get home. And this is a job people would kill for, especially in my situation! It's a laptop job that pays decently in a field that doesn't absolutely require years of training, and Ainsley's still young enough that I can defer to people with more experience and responsibility. All I have to do is learn how to talk the talk.
Ainsley, for her part, loves her job and made an admirable effort to coach me in between trying to keep her toddler from destroying the house. She can teach me the right buzzwords to use. She can teach me about her coworkers, matching names to faces, who to ask for help and who's not worth talking to. She can tell me what she usually wears to the office. (I haven't actually worn a miniskirt, by the way. The title's just for the meme.) She can teach me everything there is to know about how to market a hotel chain and why it requires great dexterity with arcane features of Microsoft PowerPoint. (Obviously as an accountant I'm an Excel person.) But she can't teach me how to talk like I'm someone who actually belongs there.
My first hands-on lesson with the marketing industry was that human beings can smell fear. I walked in on the first day after Heather pushed and laughed me out the door, giving me a 25-minute commute to do nothing but stew in my own desperation to somehow, in that moment, wake up back in Virginia. I triple-checked my makeup even though I'd practiced and it was easier than I thought it'd be. (Besides eyeliner, that one's really annoying.) But my makeup job didn't out me as a complete fraud; instead it was my gait. My habit of staring at the ground, reminding myself that Ainsley Thomas would absolutely not do that, looking up, seeing all the people around, and going back down. Going out of the way to be invisible, like I always do.
This place actively punishes invisibility, it backfires on me every time. Not only is it a relatively small office where everyone at least vaguely knows everyone else, marketing as an industry inherently attracts the most outgoing, hypersocial Type-A people imaginable. When I walk in and don't jump for joy after seeing "my" coworkers for the first time in months, when I describe my sabbatical as "fine" and only when pressed throw in half-assed details about the wonderful and fun-filled time I had in Maine. A perfectly photogenic guy walked in, passed out slices of pumpkin bread and told us his wife made it. He's younger than Ainsley, just a few years older than me. They're all excitable, upbeat, driven people, or at least they come across that way, because obviously you can't expect to market anything if you can't market yourself first. For nine hours a day I'm a sheep in wolves' clothing.
Really the worst part is how genuinely concerned they seem to be for me. One woman asked me if I had any new dog pics and looked like I'd grown a third arm when I told her I didn't. By the end of the first day, two of Ainsley's coworkers had already pulled me to the side and asked if something happened to me in Maine. They're certain of it now, I'm sure, thanks to my nonexistent poker face. It doesn't matter how much actual knowledge about Ainsley's job I can study if I can't bring myself to seem like I wholeheartedly enjoy using the word "craveable".
And I don't know how! I've never not been invisible, I liked it back there! Whatever attempts I make to seem more outgoing only make me feel like I come across as even weirder than if I just don't try. And I get a lot of chances to, with how I've got to be on some Zoom call with the other team in Jersey City half the time. I have to see Ainsley's face next to the others on the conference call, and even when I don't have to speak up I'm left thinking, God. I can't even smile in a way that doesn't look creepy.
I'm gonna need to get a hobby before I go completely insane. I need something I can actually talk about with these people, make me seem a little more like a human before Ainsley's manager (who has been very accommodating this far, by the way) outright tells me it's impacting my work instead of just shooting me concerned looks. I know "I'm" on thin ice already for having missed far more work than planned. Maybe I'll have to stop ditching the weekly after-work drinks a lot of the team goes on. But for now I can feel the team grow more distant every day as they adjust to the new Ainsley, and as much as I appreciate people reciprocating my untalkativeness I hate feeling like I'm ruining every part of her life I touch. And that happens to a lot of Inn guests, to some extent or another, but from what I've read a lot of people here have done a better job fitting in at their new lives' workplaces, not accounting for missing skills. Missing skills should be the hard part, I'm screwing up what's supposed to be the easy stuff.
All these people care about a person I can't even begin to understand how to be, how to embody. And that goes tenfold for her actual friends. I'd get more into that if it wouldn't derail the whole post.
Yeah. A hobby or just, anything that doesn't involve Ainsley's massive social network. I have got to find a way to make a blog post that isn't purely a vent session before the one about returning to my own body. I hope.
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